Peter Jackson’s King Kong for the PC Review

by sumo nova

One of the first things I noticed not about only this game but the entire King Kong advertising scheme about the movie is they always use the Peter Jackson’s when describing it. In case you thought they just brought back one of the many older versions and you were confused I guess. But not only the movie but the PC version of the game is great entertainment. To play as Jack Driscoll and shoot but mostly spear your way through the various areas of Skull Island is great. Some puzzles await you as you make your way to rescue Ann, but they are not all that tough. Mostly you have to find some sticks used to open gates but there are a few things that make this part of the game great fun. Rapids while being attacked from above by bats and the sides by huge Millipedes and of course having to fend off two T-Rex’s as you shoot some rapids will certainly keep you on your toes.

Peter Jackson’s King Kong has some pretty standard system requirements:

Supported Video Cards at Time of Release •ATI® 8500/9000/X series •NVIDIA® GeForce(TM) 3/4/FX/6/7 series (GeForce 4 MX not supported) King Kong runs fine on my system but something I noticed happening when I shut the game down and tried to do something else on my computer. Some programs and other things would often not work right after playing the game. I have noticed some games that I play do this and I just restart my computer after playing, which I did in this case as well to get things into working order.

King Kong has you going through some footage of the movie to start things off and set the story line. You are introduced to some of the characters in the movie and game as you see Carl Denham talk to the directors and others from the movie studio. They cut this to a couple of others and you find yourself getting on board the ill-fated boat heading to Skull Island.

After landing, kind of haphazardly on the island when the ship crashes into the rocks you are in the first person view of Jack Driscoll. You then make your way across some of the island with Ann, Hayes and Carl trying to get to the seaplane that is trying to rescue you. Your whole party is taken captive by the natives of the island after you find your way across part of it, stabbing, spearing and shooting at all kinds of neat things like huge millipedes and bats.

The sea plane has dropped supplies all over the island but they are widely scattered and not very plentiful. Mostly you will be using spears from the natives or just sticks to do a lot of fighting as Jack. After being captured Ann is offered up to Kong and you then chase him across more of the island, fending off monsters such as the aforementioned millipedes and bats but also Venatosaurus and finally the big T-Rex’s themselves.

You can’t kill the Rex’s but you have to keep them at bay until King Kong enters the picture and you switch to him. While fighting as the huge gorilla you will see in third person but the fighting is fun and kind of hard. You only get a couple of attacks; grab and hit plus you can grab things and use them as weapons if you get the time while fighting. You can also use what they term rage, you yell at the Rex and it will yell back or cower. Whatever happens you have to beat up the Rex until its dead and then it’s off on some more adventures across the island. As King Kong you have a very limited amount of things you can do but it is fun to be able to just beat the tar out of some of the monsters they throw at you.

The game plays out pretty much like the movie if you’ve seen that. Kong gets captured and taken to New York, escapes and goes to a very tall building. Then gets shot by airplanes and falls to his death but protects Ann to the end from the planes machine guns. There is no part of the game that comes as a great surprise but it is very well made and the game play is really fun.

Graphics are very good and I was not surprised at how well they made the game. Something they did in the game that followed the movie, when the T-Rex growls at you the wind goes whipping past you just like in the movie. It is a very well done and neat effect in the game as well. The movie made a ton of money and they had plenty to work with on the game.

The voice acting was also done well and the sounds played well especially on surround sound. Kong and the T-Rex’s yells and growls were great.

The only problem other than having to restart my computer after playing was the game was kind of short. They have you play as Jack Driscoll and go about the island trying to rescue Ann, then King Kong fighting off the monsters and humans. If they had made it longer in any of the scenes following the movie they could not have added much more without it being repetitious. In order to make it longer they would have had to go in a different direction and I think they wanted to follow the movie more than add length to the game. This is not a problem but lowers the value of the game as it takes about eight to ten hours to play the game. You can keep playing to get a better score but the game will play the same a second time, you might be tougher than the first due to gaining points playing the first time as a bonus but it could get boring after awhile.

Playing as King Kong has to be the best part of the game, being able to bash your way through monsters like the Venatosaurus is great. Overall Peter Jackson’s King Kong is well worth the cost and now you’ll be able to find it for a very reasonable price at Amazon or Ebay that makes it a great value.